Nica Nadadores: Using swimming to make a difference in Nicaragua

Thanksgiving provides us an opportunity to take stock of what we’re thankful for, and for many of us, the sport of swimming is high up on that list.

Nica Nadadores logo

For a group of lifelong swimmers, merely being thankful for the sport wasn’t enough. They wanted other people, people in less-privileged countries, to have a chance at that same positive swimming experience.

Former Virginia swimmers Timmy Hayes and Scot Robison, along with former Clemson swimmer Kyle Shoemaker have followed that inspiration to form the Nica Nadadores, a swim team for an underprivileged community in Nicaragua and potentially the first of several such teams in the country.

“Our goal is simple:” says Hayes. “To empower the youth of under-served communities through the sport of swimming.”

Hayes graduated from Virginia in 2011 and trained through the 2012 Olympic Trials before getting involved in coaching and finding he had a real passion for it. But the self-described adventurer eventually wound up in Nicaragua with a group called Manna Project International when that passion resurfaced, along with an idea on how to use it to help others.

Hayes met a missionary who wanted to build a pool and immediately saw an outlet for his coaching skills. After a large fundraising effort by Hayes, Robison, Shoemaker and others, construction started on a competition-size pool, and at the same time, the three friends started building a swim team to one day occupy it.

Hayes at the very first swimming lessons that helped launch the team. Photo credit: Julia Napper and Jose Antonio Narvaez Moraga

The team now provides swimming lessons and gear to kids, as well as academic assistance and English tutoring to team members. Education is at a premium in Nicaragua, with most kids in overcrowded public schools with limited hours and resources. Private schools are much harder to get into, but offer children much better educational opportunities.

“Our major goals are to teach leadership skills through sports and help get kids into higher-achieving schools,” Hayes says.

Hayes now lives in Nicaragua full-time – he’s only been home twice since moving there about a year-and-a-half ago – and coaches and mentors the swimmers. He says the transition was difficult and the journey to a foreign land with its own culture and language was a bit daunting, but that it’s been an incredibly rewarding experience.

“It’s a completely different environment,” he says, “but working with kids in Nicaragua and working with kids in the States – that part is the same. They get stoked about something,  you get stoked too.”

The pool is scheduled to be completed in February of next year. From there, the Nadadores are hoping to expand their impact further.

The future Nadadore pool. Photo credit: Julia Napper and Jose Antonio Narvaez Moraga

“We want to use the pool as an avenue to give kids jobs,” Hayes says, citing lifeguarding and pool maintenance as potential opportunities. The team also wants to continue growing the scholarship program for its athletes, and eventually hopes to build another pool at a different site, launching another hub of opportunities for locals.

One more important aspect of the program, though, is using it to impact American kids as well as Nicaraguan ones. The Nadadores want to get American clubs and swimmers involved, believing that helping others is as much a blessing to the helpers as the ones being helped.

December 2nd is the program’s “Giving Tuesday,” where they’ll be reaching out to 25 different swim clubs, hoping each can raise $100 each for the program. It’s a much-discussed theme of swimming that all swimmers, no matter where they’re from, share a special bond, a brotherhood that only such a difficult and physically-demanding sport can foster. Giving Tuesday offers swimmers a chance to strengthen that bond with their fellow athletes in another part of the world. If you or your club want to get involved, contact the Nadadores or check out their Donate page here.

Swimmers and clubs can get involved in other ways: the Nica Nadadores gladly accept donations of swimming gear, even old gear American swimmers might just throw away. Swimmers can write letters to their Nicaraguan counterparts, and the Nadadores even have a dream of hosting training groups in Nicaragua to connect their local beginning swimmers with more experienced teams face-t0-face.

If you’re interested in any of these options, or have your own ideas on how you can help, contact the Nadadores at [email protected]. You can learn more about the program on their brand-new website, nicanadadores.org.

A few more pictures of various Nadadore events:

Photo credit: Julia Napper and Jose Antonio Narvaez Moraga

“We start our swim classes with themes like ‘working as a team’, ‘stepping out of your comfort zone’, and ‘goal setting’,” says Hayes. “Thanks to donations we can equip our swimmers with suits, caps, and goggles.”

In November, the Nadadores started an apprenticeship program for swimmers who don’t attend school. The early phase of the program taught the children how to weld, leading to the garbage cans created by kids below:

Photo credit: Julia Napper and Jose Antonio Narvaez Moraga

Photo credit: Julia Napper and Jose Antonio Narvaez Moraga

Hayes says: “Here we are at the end of October on a team trip to a 50m pool in Managua.  At the end of every month, we reward the 10 swimmers who have the best attendance, behavior, and overall progress with a trip somewhere outside their community.  In December we hope to head to the ocean!”

Author’s note: this is a story that’s near and dear to my heart, because it reinforces what I believe to be the most important element of swimming. Yes, the sport allows us to have fun, form relationships and do what we love, but it also allows us an opportunity to use our sport to make an impact on the lives of real people in need. I love writing about wins, records and historic performances. But even more, I love writing about people using the “funnest sport” to serve those in need.

There is a constantly growing number of ways to do this. We’ve written about the Lane 8 organization, which uses a similar model as the Nadadores to help provide swimming gear and team opportunities to low-income swimmers within the Cincinnati community. There’s no doubt that nearly every major in the world has kids who could benefit from the sport we all know and love, yet are constrained by financial limits.

The international focus of the Nadadores hits home for me. My dad, brother and I spent last summer running a series of swim clinics in northern Minnesota this summer to raise money for El Salvador, with a focus on clean water. Most of us are privileged enough to have enough clean water to be able to swim in it once, twice, maybe even three times a day. But across the world, there are places where drinkable water is scarce, where people are forced to choose between drinking it and bathing in it.

We raised almost $4,000 to drill a well and provide a filtration system for a local village. We also helped raise donations for a bundle of clothing items, school supplies and soccer balls for kids at an orphanage in the village of Shutia. We’re heading down there on Christmas Eve to give out the gifts to the kids that night – the only tangible Christmas presents the kids will get. We’ll spend the rest of the week volunteering at the orphanage and the local village. (Shameless plug: you can learn more about our program at jaredandersonswimming.com. We’ll hopefully be updating the site with pictures from El Salvador when we get to internet access).

So this Thanksgiving, let’s all remember just how thankful we all are for the sport we love. But let’s also remember that we can show our thankfulness by using our blessings to bless others. Together, we can make swimming something so much bigger than a collection of races and first place medals.

Lastly, thank you to all of our SwimSwam readers – we’re thankful for you, and for everyone who helps make swimming the sport we all know and love. Happy Thanksgiving!